What does it take to be at the Elite level in HYROX?
Recently, the qualifiers for the Elite races at the 2023 HYROX World Championships were decided. This qualification is largely based on the fastest times of the year in the Pro division, with some spots also reserved for those who achieved a podium in the Elite races at the European Championships (in Maastricht) and the North American Championships (in Chicago).
The standard this year is on another level. On the Men’s side, the median time of the top 15 was 57:35m (over 2 minutes faster than last season), and the Women’s side it was 01:04:13 (over 3 minutes faster than last season!).
To give readers an understanding of what it takes to reach this “Elite” level, I surveyed the qualifying athletes and am excited to share their insights with you.
The Athletes
The Elite 15 athletes are shown in the images below, along with their fastest times of the season…
Note: Jezabel Kramer and Antje Hardes will be racing after Ida Mathilde Steensgaard and Mikaela Norman chose not to accept their spots in the race (due to a focus on the European OCR Championships, I believe, for Ida, and recent health issues for Mikaela). The below data / results reflects these changes. It is possible there will be further changes to the line-ups (perhaps due to a late injury, for example) but they won’t be reflected in this article.
Ok, let’s start with some of the basics…
Geography
18 of the athletes are from Europe, 11 from America, and 1 from Australasia. By country, the breakdown is as follows:
USA – 11
Germany – 9
UK – 3
France – 2
Australia – 1
Austria – 1
Ireland – 1
Portugal – 1
Switzerland – 1
One thing that perhaps stands out here is that the UK only have 3 people in the 30 qualifying athletes. Considering how popular HYROX is in the UK, and how big the UK events are, it might have been reasonable to expect to see more than 3 athletes from the UK in the elite line-ups.
It’s also interesting that there are no Spanish athletes. HYROX is very popular in Spain, and the overall general standard of athletes does, on the face of it, seem very high at the Spanish events. That said Alfons Deu Ruiz, Rubén Patiño Vieites and Aitor Lizarazu Hormilla were all in the 16th to 30th qualifying spots so there are plenty knocking on the door!
With new events already announced for Australia, Singapore, Italy, Poland and Dubai in the coming season, we may well see a significant change in the nationalities represented in the Elite 15 in next year’s championships.
Age
Average age is 31.1 on women’s side, and 34 on the men’s (medians are 30 and 36 respectively). The youngest athlete (Mirjam Von Rohr) is just 21 years old, and the oldest (Jezabel Kremer) is 43. There are 4 athletes aged 40+ (Jezabel Kremer, Joffrey Voisin, Tom Hogan, and Tiago Lousa).
The fact that the average age of the men is 3 years older than the women is interesting. Perhaps it’s too soon in the sport to determine if this is a trend we’ll continue to see. But if you have any thoughts on why it might be, feel free to let us know in the comments below!
Unfortunately, I haven’t had replies from everyone on the survey so the remaining results are all based on who actually replied as opposed to all 30. Those excluded are Janne Thomsen, Antje Hardes, and Ryan Kent.
Weight
Average weight of the athletes is 140lbs (63kg) on women’s side, and 180lbs (82kg) on the men’s.
There’s a reasonably wide spread between the athletes though, with Vivian Tafuto, at 168lbs (76kg), the heaviest woman, and Joffrey Voisin, Hunter McIntyre and Michael Sandbach the heaviest men (all around 200lbs / 91kg). The lightest male is Tiago Lousa at 159lbs (72kg).
Sporting Background
Here is how some of the athletes described their sporting background prior to discovering HYROX…
Meg Jacoby – Cross country, Track and Field, Powerlifting
Lauren Weeks – CrossFit, Soccer, Swimming
Terra Jackson – Running
Rebecca Mason – Elite Gymnast
Linda Meier – Fitness, Running
Viola Oberländer – Gymnastics, Running
Vivian Tafuto – Swimming
Alandra Greenlee – CrossFit, Triathlons
Jezabel Kremer – OCR / Trail Running
Alina Willnow – Handball when younger. HIIT Classes and Les Mills Courses, Cycling Classes (just for fun)
Kris Rugloski – OCR, Running
Belle MacFarlane – Gymnastics, Track
Graham Halliday – Bodybuilding
Tiago Lousa – Trail Running, Crossfit
Alexander Roncevic – Swimming
Dylan Scott – Running
Tom Hogan – Running
Jon Wynn – Athletics and Rugby League as a junior. Then as an adult I was in the military and didn’t do sports until finding HYROX.
Tim Wenisch – Track and Field Athlete
Joffrey Voisin – OCR
Tobias Lautwein – Cycling
Hunter McIntyre – OCR
Michael Sandbach – Football
Florian Gast – XC Skiing, Running
David Magida – Running and OCR
Peter Schiller – Football
Mirjam Von Rohr – Gymnastic, Boxing, Running middle to long distance, bike, crossfit
Occupation
It’s easy to assume that these Elite levels athletes must simply spend all their day training, with no other commitments to worry about. But that’s not the case. All have jobs or businesses in some way, shape or form, and I believe only 8 of the 30 derive their main income from the fitness industry (as personal trainers, or gym owners, for example).
“I Don’t Know”
One interesting thing I want to highlight before we go any further, is the high number of athletes who responded with “I don’t know” to many of the questions (or they had to make rough guesses).
The main questions I asked in the survey were as follows:
Approx. current 5km / 10km / Half Marathon / Marathon run time
Approx. 3 rep max Squat / Deadlift / Military Press
Approx. 2km Ski Erg / Row Time
“Karen” workout time (150 wall balls, with 20lbs / 14lbs)
Make of that what you want but if anything, it shows that you don’t need to be testing yourself on these distances, maxing out on lifts, etc, week in week out to prepare for HYROX. The Elite – in general – are much more specific than that and train for HYROX. If you want to go and race 10km run every Saturday morning I’m not saying that’s wrong – but it’s clearly not something that most of the Elite of the sport are doing.
Additionally, at least one athlete told me his hips mean he doesn’t do deadlifts or squats at all, and a couple of others mentioned that they too, never do those exercises. Most mentioned that they rarely ever test their max strength.
Running Times
Based on those who could answer (many of which needed to give a rough estimation), these were the average running times for each distance…
5km – 18:55 (women), 16:40 (men)
10km – 40:16 (women), 34:17 (men)
Half Marathon – 01:31:42 (women), 01:16:02 (men)
Marathon – 03:28:08 (women)*, 02:48:15 (men)
* Only 4 women were able to estimate their time for a marathon so this average is based on a very small data set.
In general, the quickest runner on the women’s side looks to be Megan Jacoby (the current world record holder), with 16:42m over 5km, and 01:20:21 half marathon.
On the Men’s side, Tim Wenisch seems to edge it with 15:45m over 5km, 32:30m for 10km, 01:12:00 half marathon, and 02:35:00 for a marathon.
It’s worth saying that most people were able to give an estimation of their 5km, but as the distances increased, fewer athletes seemed sure of how they would fare, and many couldn’t give an estimate.
SkiErg and Row
The average 2km times for the athletes on the Concept2 Ski Erg and Row machines looked like this…
Ski – 08:00 (women), 06:55 (men)
Row – 07:40 (women), 06:42 (men)
Not everybody was able to provide an estimate for their times on the machines, and there wasn’t a huge variance between the athletes who could (in general).
Hunter McIntyre (06:20 ski, 06:10 row) and Joffrey Voisin (06:40 ski, 06:17 row) were two of the faster athletes on the men’s side.
Vivian Tafuto (07:35 ski, 07:07 row) and Terra Jackson (07:38 ski, 07:08 row) were two of the faster athletes on the women’s side.
Strength
Approximate median 3 rep max (3RM) deadlift, squat and military press were as follows:
3RM deadlift – 242lbs / 110kg (women), 309lbs / 140kg (men)
3RM squat – 181lbs / 82kg (women), 276lbs / 118kg (men)
3RM military press – 90lbs / 41kg (women), 130lbs / 59kg (men)
Again, these numbers are based on those who were able to answer or estimate (not everybody was).
The strongest women (in general) appear to be Megan Jacoby (305lbs deadlift, 270lbs squat, 105lbs military press), followed by Mirjam Von Rohr, Lauren Weeks and Terra Jackson.
On the men’s side it was Hunter McIntyre (485lbs deadlift, 370lbs squat, 185lbs military press) followed by Graham Halliday, Michael Sandbach and David Magida.
Muscular Endurance
When I last did this survey, I didn’t ask any questions around muscular endurance measures but concluded it likely is an important area in HYROX. This time I did ask athletes for their “Karen” time (which is a CrossFit workout of 150 reps wall balls, with 20lb / 14lb ball). Not many athletes were able to estimate their time for this, but those who did seemed to be somewhere between 5mins and 6mins on both the women’s and the men’s side (though Jon Wynn estimated he might be around 04:20).
I will highlight though the response from Mirjam Von Rohr (4th fastest woman this season) who told me she’d done it in 04:10m. She’s also done 1000 wall balls in 39:05m, and 1000 burpees in 55:51m. As one of the slower runners on the Elite Women’s side she certainly makes up for it with her strength on the HYROX stations and her very impressive levels of muscular endurance…
“My 1rm back squat is 130kg. In training I’ve done 100kg for 25reps and 85kg for 69reps. My maximal strength is not so good, but my strength endurance very good. On the 69 back squats I failed not because the legs, but because the barbell was rolling down from the back rack.”
Training Volume
So how much do these athletes train to get to this level? Well, it varies quite a lot, but the median was just over 14 hours a week for the woman, and 12 hours for the men.
Some go well beyond that though, with both Viola Oberlander and Dylan Scott estimating their volume at somewhere between 25-30 hours a week. That’s not necessary though to be elite – Jezabel Kremer estimated 6 hours a week, and Tobias Lautwein, estimated he does 8 hours.
Running Volume
Running is obviously a major component of HYROX, and running volume is a major part of most athlete’s training schedule. The median total was 34miles (54.7km) per week for women and 36 miles for men, though again there was a lot of variance…
Kris Rugloski, Lauren Weeks, Viola Oberlander and Megan Jacoby are putting in around 60 miles running per week, whereas Alandra Greenlee is doing just 5 to 10 miles.
On the men’s side, Tim Wenisch is doing around 56miles a week, and Michael Sandbach and Alexander Roncevic are on the lower end at around 25miles.
What Else?
There is much more to HYROX than being strong and good at running. Of course, those are important, but muscular endurance, pacing, tactics, nutrition and mindset all obviously come into play, amongst many other things. There are certainly athletes in the elites, who are not the strongest in a deadlift or squat, and not the best runner, but still compete at the top level. Rebecca Mason touched on some of this in her survey response with this comment:
“I feel it’s great to have really good numbers in the above but I have watched so many really good athletes who are far better than me in training & on paper, not be able to pull it all together on race day. The mental ability along with the ability to stick to a game plan suitable for you – not get caught up in race adrenaline/hype is so so important. Know your strengths, know where you can push & race your own race. You can’t measure that. For me personally, competition exposure & composure came from my time as an ex-gymnast, mental resilience & the courage to dig deep when things get tough!”
When I interviewed Rebecca (you can watch that here) we talked about this some more, and one thing I highlighted was how much more closely her running time in HYROX is aligned to her 10km pace than it might be for some other athletes (and a similar story for her Ski and Row times in HYROX relative to her 2km pace). Now maybe this is down to her abilities at “compromised running” which means her pace doesn’t drop a huge amount even after fatiguing her legs on the functional stations. It’s all very well being a good runner but if you can’t do it compromised then you’ll struggle in HYROX.
Rebecca also told me her heart rate is “in the red” for the whole of the race. It’s made me wonder whether some athletes who can make it to the elite level are not necessarily just physically more capable than others who don’t reach that level, but they have the grit and mental toughness that allows them to be incredibly uncomfortable for the during of a HYROX and grind it out, whereas others may back off a little.
The word “grit” is something that Megan Jacoby, James Kelly and Felicity Cole have all used when I’ve spoken to them, and it’s something too that ex-Australian special forces Jon Wynn alluded to. Grit can’t be distilled down to a number in a survey (I can’t give you the median grit level unfortunately!) But suffice to say the elite of the sport aren’t just strong, fast, physically impressive athletes. They also have levels of grit, determination, and resilience that I suspect many people cannot even comprehend – and they are using that not just when it comes to race time, but day in day out during training as well.
